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Candace Valenzuela’s campaign has been picking up steam ahead of today’s runoff election in Texas’ 24th District, where she is running against fellow Democrat Kim Olson for a chance to replace retiring Republican Rep. Kenny Marchant in the fall.

Valenzuela, 36, a member of the local school board, hopes to become the first Afro-Latina elected to Congress in a newly competitive district in suburban Dallas-Fort Worth, where the political and demographic landscape is swiftly changing. While her policy positions are similar to Olson’s, Valenzuela’s life experience and connections to the district have stood out to voters recently. “The biggest thing is that I’m rooted in my community,” Valenzuela told Refinery29 in a recent interview. “I’ve lived here for years. My husband and I work here. My son’s going to be attending the local elementary school.”

Olson, a retired Air Force colonel, finished first-place in the March primary, with 41% of the vote to Valenzuela’s 30%. But Valenzuela has been climbing in the polls, particularly since the nationwide protests for racial justice have given her an opportunity to speak about the challenges of growing up as a Black Latina. According to a recent Data for Progress survey, Valenzuela is leading by an 11-point margin (40% to 29%) and is in a strong position to defeat Olson.

In her launch video, Valenzuela describes being poor and homeless as a child after her mother fled domestic abuse, at one point sleeping in a kiddie pool outside a gas station.

“Candace immediately stood out not only because her story of resilience amid tremendous hardships is one that too many Americans can relate to today, but also because she was the only Latina running who was already representing part of the district,” U.S. Rep. Tony Cárdenas of California, chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus political arm, said in a statement. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Congressional Black Caucus, and the Asian American and Pacific Islander Congressional Caucus all endorsed Valenzuela, according to the Texas Tribune, making her the first 2020 candidate to earn the support of all three.

If Valenzuela wins, she will face Beth Van Duyne, a former Trump administration official and former mayor of Irving, TX, in the general election. Regardless of who wins, the Texas-24 seat is one to watch for the Democratic Party.

Ahead, we spoke with Valenzuela about how her life experience has shaped her policy, why she believes she’s the person for the job, and more.

Can you tell us about how your background and experience, especially being homeless when you were younger, has changed your socioeconomic perspective and how it would influence your policy?

It taught me that what it looks like to make your way back up, is pretty essential, if you’re able to do so. From having access to housing through HUD, having access to food stamps, having access to our public schools –– that was absolutely critical for me.

The homelessness piece happened when I was really young. But my economic perspective was also refined by what I experienced after I got out of college. I crossed the T’s, I dotted the I’s, and in my very neat narrative presented in my launch video, they don’t talk about that part that happened between college — that full ride to Claremont McKenna college — and the school board.

And the thing that happened between the two, was that I graduated into the height of the recession. I had this $150K degree, but I didn’t have parents that were very well-connected. Both my Mom and Dad were enlisted military. I was having a really hard time finding a job that lined up with my experience and I wasn’t alone. So, I ended up taking a job and another and another, because that was the only way I was going to be able to cover my health insurance, which was incredibly expensive. I had a pre-existing condition and so it made my health insurance even higher.

From all this I learned about what the economy was doing for folks even if you did everything that they said you were supposed to do. Folks who didn’t necessarily have the opportunity to go to college. Does that say that they don’t deserve to have access to food, that they don’t deserve to have access the health care, that they don’t deserve to have access to the basics in order to survive? I think that’s really troubling.  

And I don’t necessarily know that there’s enough awareness in our government that the goal post has shifted, the bar has been raised to an unacceptable point. And that’s definitely informed my policy as of late.

How do you believe your district has changed in the last few years? What do you think you need to do in a district like this that used to be red to bring out people to vote for a progressive candidate?

The demographics have been shifting pretty significantly. Texas 24 as of a few years ago, was a majority minority district–a majority person-of-color district. Texas is trending in that direction as well. We have a growing number of people of color in this state. We have a growing number of voters who are dissatisfied with the system of governance that’s been provided to them. I think that’s something that’s happening across the board and that’s accelerated by COVID.

We saw a lot of the results of this shift last cycle. The last cycle the candidate running for Congress was a Democrat, Jan MacDowell. She worked hard, she got within three points. But Beto O’Rourke won this district running for Senate. And he won this district by getting out more people of color.  

And so, what we’re looking at, when I’m looking to campaign in 2020, is trying to pull up and out all of those folks that don’t necessarily know if they can relate to the folks down-ballot as well. Making sure that this isn’t just about defeating Donald Trump, but that it’s also about re-imagining our system of governance so that it’s more responsive to people.

What do you make of the recent COVID spikes in Texas, and what do you think the government could have done differently to communicate vital public health information to people?

They needed to listen to the science, and they needed to communicate that people needed to shut down for real and they needed to wear a mask. And what our state government did was they downplayed the necessity of shutting down. We made headlines across the country for all of the wrong reasons. Our Lt. Governor said something tantamount to, “I’m totally okay if your grandmother dies.” And that’s not okay.

It’s not okay to make this argument that it’s peoples’ lives vs. the economy. When really, the economy exists for peoples’ lives. And the economy exists because of peoples’ lives.

Letting a huge number of folks die–because people would get compromised immune systems for one reason or another, people of a certain age––letting our folks die, it’s actually really economically stupid.

It’s not okay to make this argument that it’s peoples’ lives vs. the economy. When really, the economy exists for peoples’ lives. And the economy exists because of peoples’ lives.

Speaking reopening too soon, what do you think about all this conversation about reopening schools in the fall?

I do think that the best type of instruction for children and for development happens to be the kind that is in person. However, we are dealing with unprecedented times. And when we’re talking about the ease of the spread of COVID-19, when we’re talking about a lot of the related illnesses that come along with it that are hurting children–and if it doesn’t kill them it can certainly injure them pretty significantly–I don’t think that Betsy DeVos is really taking into account what it is to keep our kids safe.

I might take her seriously if she said, “We should really reopen schools and we’re going to talk about giving them Federal funding for super small classes sizes and plenty of PPE and plenty of sanitation and doing what it takes to protect our teachers, our faculty, our staff, our babies and our families from greater community spread. But she says, “Oh no, it’s an overreaction. We should just go back.”

You have discussed experiencing some inordinately harsh and criminalized punishment, you and your siblings, as a Black child. How has that influenced your work on shutting down the school-to-prison pipeline?

One of the ways I’m seeking to actively combat the school-to-prison pipeline is to make sure that we are pushing for better early childhood education. That we are not suspending children if they’re under a certain age. Those out-of-school suspensions typically cause a lot of problems for children that are already having a hard time at home.

And working to make sure that we hire teachers that are from the community and provide them with the training, not just to teach our kids—but in my school district we did a lot of trauma-informed training, to make sure that the teachers understood where the kids are coming from, because that’s a specialized type of training.

But on the federal level, making sure that we have the funding for free lunch, so our title funding for our Title I schools. Making sure that we have the funding for our bilingual education. Making sure that we have the funding for our special needs education.

And finally, just making sure that we encourage restorative practices in our schools. Making sure that we discourage the arrest of a 6 year old, the arrest of a 7 year old, because that’s not the appropriate measures for dealing with small children. And that’s going to take a lot of thoughtful engagement with the community in order to better look at our policing both in and out of our schools.

What kind of impact has COVID had on your own family?

My mother-in-law is in her 70s, and at first it was a little bit hard to let her know that this was something that was very specifically dangerous for her, because she is in better shape than the whole family. She was a teacher for four decades.

She’s been a lifeline for us because of the fact that my one year old had trouble with illness, because we have my four year old, we certainly don’t want him to go into daycare either with that risk. My husband is still working full time. Campaigning for Congress is a full time job as well. And being able to balance those things has been critical.

It’s unimaginably tough for people right now who have been able to put together their lives on the basis of having their extended family involved, aunts, uncles, grandparents. Those are things that are pretty critical to me not just as an American but also as a Latina. I’m used to having that really close contact with extended family members.

COVID has broken a lot of that down. I feel like the government has failed to really capture what it looks like to be a part of a community in which you are dependent on each other and you are supporting each other. And what happens when you lose that support or when you lose that ability to help.

You’ve been endorsed by people from John Lewis to Julián Castro, to Elizabeth Warren, to Kamala Harris. Why do you believe your message has resonated nationally, and with Democrats across the spectrum?

I have a unique perspective coming from where I come from. I have the quintessential American story. It’s the story of families who are fighting to put food on the table, fighting to keep a roof over their head, fighting hard for the American Dream, to see their kids succeed. And I think that that story is one that resonates with folks across the spectrum.

It’s also one of those stories that’s becoming increasingly out of reach for many Americans. Even before we were dealing with the ravages of COVID-19, we were dealing with the inequity in education, inequity in access to water and air, inequity in justice. And these were problems that I was seeking to solve, and problems that I’m still seeking to solve now.

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Natalie Gontcharova, Khareem Sudlow